One Track Mind by Bethany Campbell Read Free Book Online

lot,” Clyde said. “Her daddy wasn’t himself in his last years. Responsibility for this place wasn’t supposed to fall on her. It was supposed to be her brother’s concern. You heard what happened to him?”
    Kane nodded without emotion. “Yeah. I read it in the papers.”
    A. J. Simmons, Jr., Second Lieutenant in the North Carolina National Guard, had died in Afghanistan four years ago.
    Clyde shook his head. “The old man never got over it. A.J. dyin’ did him in. Nobody but Lori to hold things together. She’s done her best. Always has. Kept her chin up through the whole thing. But the odds against her? Look at that scoreboard.”
    Kane looked up. It was the same scoreboard that had stood there more than twenty years ago, and it had been old then.
    “It can only show the first five positions in the race,” Clyde muttered. “Shoulda replaced it years ago.” He turned and gestured at the track. “And look at that asphalt. That asphalt needs serious work…”
    Kane could see that, as well as the worn seating rising in tiers, the shoddiness that had set in. He saw the shot-out night lights and all the signs of the Halesboro’s aging infrastructure. They surrounded him like both a challenge and a rebuke.
    He took in the changes time had brought, none of them good. But his mind only half registered them. What he saw more vividly was Lori herself, that first afternoon they’d talked.
    Seeing her in that office made him feel as if he’d stepped into a time machine. He’d hurtled backward to that summer day they’d truly met. The memory came rushing back so strongly he still couldn’t exorcise it.
     

    H E’D SEEN HER the minute he’d popped the latch and opened the gate into her backyard.
    He hadn’t expected that. Oh, no.
    She lay stretched on a white lounge chair by the pool, shaded by a big green-and-white umbrella. It was the biggest umbrella he’d ever seen, and it had a NASCAR logo on it. But even its shadow couldn’t dull the red-gold of her hair heaped atop her head, or dim the white curve of her throat as she sat reading her book.
    She barely glanced at him; his presence didn’t even seem to register. She went back to perusing her book, and his heart knotted in his chest like a fist clenching so hard it hurt. He’d seen her at school before—a petite girl with a face so lovely it could commandeer his gaze and keep it if he didn’t control himself. He was glad he was a master of self-control.
    This girl was out of his league. Half the guys in school wanted her, and she could have her pick of them. The odd thing was she hadn’t picked anybody. Even in his self-imposed distance from other students, he heard she went out. But not with anyone special.
    He figured she was smart enough—he’d heard she was very smart indeed—to be saving herself for someone better than Halesboro could offer. She’d end up going to an expensive university and marrying a handsome boy with a daddy even richer than hers.
    And her daddy was mighty rich. He owned and ran the speedway, and Kane knew he socialized with all those famous racing people. He imagined Lori at formal dinners in an impossibly fancy banquet room in her big house, being courted by handsome young drivers, guys who were up-and-coming heroes and would someday be millionaires.
    So, to him, she seemed the most unattainable girl in school—and the most desirable. The maddening thing wasn’t that she was desirable simply because she was pretty. Halesboro had pretty girls aplenty.
    No. There was something different about Lori Simmons,some indefinable thing that set her off from all the others. She never called attention to herself, yet somehow she commanded attention. She gave off a sense of individuality, a natural independence.
    She carried more books than any other girl in school. He mostly hated school, but he liked books. And she didn’t just carry her assigned textbooks. He’d see her sitting in study hall, her homework done—she seemed to